It was definitely not your ordinary Tuesday morning on Miles Street in Santa Cruz. Today the newest neighbors would be moving in and everyone on the block was anxious to see them. They arrived in a brown Volvo station wagon about 9:30 a.m. and the first of the six newcomers was lifted into the arms of the woman who had raised her from birth six months earlier. The new resident of the front-yard coop was a beautiful Aracana chicken, known for their striking rust and black feathers and luxuriant black tails. The hen gave a long, low cluck as Cindy opened the gate and lowered the bird into the henyard where Sheila and Sophie, their new guardians, had spread hay.
Ten-year-old Sophie filled the big tin water bucket and set it up on a stump at the right height for the birds to drink. Sheila cast a few handfuls of chicken food as Cindy carried the rest of her friends to their new home, the brick-colored henhouse with the green-gabled roof that our neighbor Christopher had built so lovingly the week before.
Now there were two each of the new arrivals: the Aracanas, plus Rhode Island Reds and a black and white speckled variety. The birds went right to work making the coop their own—rooting up tufts of grass and dirt that had been mounded in the corner, scratching at the hay looking for oats and greens Sophie had brought them. Soon other neighbors had come to stand around the coop and smile, marveling over the birds’ beauty and melodious gentle clucking.
Sophie and Isabel crouched down in one corner of the yard, each holding out halves of fresh cucumber, which Cheyenne had grown at the Homeless Garden. The birds loved the crunchy inner cucumbers and pecked them clean right down to the thick green skins. Sophie picked some string beans from her garden and the hens loved them as well. The next morning she had four fresh, warm eggs to put in her basket—and two of them were blue!
Our new front-yard garden and coop have become the hub of the neighborhood. Every evening, folks walking their dogs stop to chat about their own coop or the gardens their grandparents started during the Depression. Recognizing the renewed need for sustainable living, this August 23-29 has been declared National Community Gardening Week by the US Department of Agriculture. In our region we have a long history of farming, and it’s wonderful to see its resurgence in our urban gardens today.
—Karen Warren